After The Rain (Calarts BFA4 Film)

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Published 2022-05-06
Calarts BFA4 Thesis Film "After The Rain"

After years abroad, April returns to her hometown of Beijing and meets up with a childhood friend. who never left.

- Cast -
April - Ariane Marchese
Yuxin - Zhang Jingqi
Young April - Blake Yuan
Young Yuxin - Yue Zirui

- Sound -
Music - Roy Berardo
Sound & Mix - Jack Weiss
Re-recording Mix - Daniel Eaton

- Directed by Chelsea Yijia Li -
Contact : [email protected]
Website : chelsealiart.com/
Instagram & Twitter : @cheseely

Thank you for watching!

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Watch films made by my classmates here!

   • 2022 CalArts Character Animation Stud...  


11/9/2023 : Thank you to Ezequiel Montaña and Renata Cipolatti for Latin American Spanish subtitles!
11/20/2023 : Thank you to Quiet Dubbing Studios for Italian subtitles!

All Comments (21)
  • @jnguardian5051
    Omg, I will never ever be able to accurately describe just how mellow the atmosphere was in here. The warm lighting, the beautiful soundtrack, the painterly environment and everything here in this film is just so so beautiful ❤ I could only imagine just how much effort it took to make this! Thanks for making such an amazing animation, Chelsea!
  • I love this~ The fact that April speaks English to her friend is sooo relatable... This is exactly how I communicate to my friends who prefer to speak the mother tongue!
  • @EL-nd3wx
    In a 4 mintutes, this short film has potrayed a beautiful storytelling of change between two friends. A kind of warm feeling of nostalgia is evoked in me as I watch it, and it leaves a bittersweet taste in my mouth, the good kind. Especially with the nicely chosen title, 'After the Rain'. Certainly, this is a successful animation with an awesome choice of colour palette, setting, storyline and voice/background music. I absolutely fell in love with this at first sight! Being fluent in both chinese and english, I think the voicelines are really accurate and well done! Good job, Chelsea!
  • Oh my god, I'm at a loss for words. This is indescribably nostalgic but cheerful and beautiful at the same time. My interpretation of this short film would be: April's had a very specific vision of Beijing from her memories and has instead spent the majority of her life in America but Yuxin has known China her whole life and grew up with the rapid development so she doesn't notice what seem like shocking changes to April. Even Yuxin bleached her hair when April visited while April kept her hair the same since young. It also shows how Yuxin is more open to change while April likes things just the way they used to be. Another thing perhaps is because April wants to hold on to these memories which are the few connections she still has with Yuxin and China. But things keep changing and then she feels that she's losing those precious memories and moments. However, Yuxin doesn't feel that as much, again all her memories are in China. That bus stop where they were sitting April asks, "Do you think they'll tear down this bus stop the next time I come back?" She is afraid of losing this moment too because it was also raining in the flashback when they were young and April was leaving soon for America, now she's also leaving China when it's raining. It's "After the Rain" when April visits, and she's happy to be back. She also notices that the marks are gone on the concrete through the puddle. But then it's raining when she leaves again. Also, oh no, don't tell me those are tear stains on the photos at the end 😭. Thank you so much for drawing this, it was just what i needed after a long day! Congratulations on your graduation as well! I hope you are proud of your masterpiece!!
  • @GB-qu5rj
    My best friend from highschool and I were once inseparable. I knew I was going to go to college somewhere far away, I always knew, but I hated leaving her. I got so busy that I barely had time for talking to her on the phone all the time, and we kind of stopped for a while. When I went back that summer after my first year, we tried spending time together but it just wasn't the same. We didn't have a lot in common anymore, we didn't know what to talk about. After that I lost connection with her entirely. She reached out a couple times, but I was either busy or sometimes scared to try again. It was all my doing in the end and I'll always regret it. She died last year, from an epileptic seizure (she always had them but the last couple years beforehand they became more frequent). I'll never get closure with her. She'll never get closure with me. I think about it all of the time. We ended up like these two girls, yet without the silent but understanding close to our friendship
  • @Byeolimation
    I relate to this so much, I moved to the US at a young age and just visited Korea for the first time in 12 years. Seeing how everything changed made me feel like I’d taken a time machine. The 12 years I spent in the US felt like a blank. It’s like you leave a version of yourself behind for every place you go to, and you pick up from where you left it when you come back. Now that I’m back in the US, it feels like the 2 months I spent in Korea were a dream, with nothing but pictures left as proof.
  • @IAmSwiftPotato
    What a beautiful film. I loved the names disappearing in cement. It was such a well-thought-out metaphor for change.
  • @senvurii6468
    this is soo incredible!! this might be farfetched but I see its called "after the rain" because of the rhyme "april showers bring may flowers", and the character April is the one who leaves at the end, which i think is so
  • It made me think of all the things that are changing in my university...but new things are sometimes good like the permaculture garden near my library, I love to spend time in the garden and eat vegetables I planted...there is one person I miss and it's you my love, I wish I could see you enter the library and spend some time with me, share the same air as you ❤😘
  • @poppin098
    How relatable I had a friend in college we both spoke different languages yet could clearly understand eachother ..I miss him 💛
  • The world is changing, and time is moving forward. But their friendship and promise remains.
  • @malk-xc3zr
    this film is absolutely gorgeous :00 i love the themes of change, especially in relation to the fast development of China. every time i visit smth is different too lol. super cool stuff! and congrats on your graduation!!
  • @zam6877
    What sinks home the personal weight of this film for me is the "goodbye Calarts" at the very end...hit so hard
  • @mehcuriyyet
    Çok hoş... Huzurlu, sakin, dingin... Sevdim 🌿🤍
  • @Shadowreaper5
    The animating was very well done and major props to Roy for the amazingly melancholic music. Sound effects were also on point. Love to see anything that Ariane is in. A very insteresting choice to have April come back from moving to America and only speak English. This felt very bittersweet.
  • @user-ck2ri5qq4c
    It gives me such warm and sad feelings at the same time. Beautiful film 🤍
  • @reioryu
    not the tear stains on the pictures at the end😭😭😭